Russia designs various models of the Filin optical blinder.

Filin optical disturbance station can blind the adversary at a distance of two kilometers and deny him a chance of precision fire at a warship. Integral Director for quality Vladimir Zharov told the Zvezda broadcaster about the prospective design in the sphere. At present, several models of the blinder are being designed.

The Filin 5P-42 optical interference system (Picture source: Roselectronika Holding / Zvezda)

Filin was designed as a weapon to protect warships and vessels in coastal waters at a distance of two kilometers in twilight. It can also be used to transmit light signals and as a powerful search light.

The station modulates the frequency of emission brightness. The impact of non-coherent emission of Filin was confirmed by trials, held jointly with the Institute of applied problems. The research determined the strength of the emission flow which, on the one hand, does not cause irreversible eyesight loss and, on the other hand, blinds the eyes. Volunteers who shot at targets at ranges said precision fire was impossible. They all suffered dizziness and loss of orientation. They saw a light spot floating before the eyes. In contrast to western analogues, the blinder does not cause a fatal loss of eyesight.

Filin does not have direct analogues. All foreign analogues use laser emission which burns out the eyes. The Russian blinder does not cause a loss of eyesight, but decreases fire precision three-five times.

The blinder can be carried by any warship. Yet, small ships have to be upgraded due to their size and weight characteristics. But the upgrade will not take much time.

Nowadays, several models of the blinder are being designed. They will be portable and vehicle-carried. Roselectronika Holding has designed a new emitter with a varifocal lens that increases emission power three times and extends the impact to three-four kilometers instead of two.

The existing blinder will be replaced by a station that would affect human eyesight and technical vision, robotic complexes and other optical and electronic day and night sights. Integral research shows that only laser coherent emission can produce such a blinding effect in daytime. The emitter will have a laser beam angular deviation scanner in the area of threat to create a spatial suppression zone. It will be much broader than the beam itself.

It is also planned to add the so-called visual-optical reconnaissance means and data transmission to detect targets and transmit their coordinates and images to the command for automatic aiming of coherent and non-coherent disturbances at selected targets, Integral Director for quality Vladimir Zharov told the Zvezda broadcaster.

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